Three and a Half Emotions

Poetry Collection with Know Thyself Heal Thyself

Bitterness

Shows where you need to heal, where you’re still holding judgments on others and yourself

ugly as a bittermelon calloused with off-putting flavour is a memory of rejection, understood between the extremes of encountering true injustice and truly not having been enough to have stayed in this position.

the ugliness of microaggressions is that they weigh silently into your soul as you ask what if knowing that if the answer is yes, then there is a world in which you do not belong — a frightening, heavy spell; yet if the answer is no, there is something within you beyond anything systemic or contextual that was wrong, and you bear the weight of your errors.

This is the space within which these bitter memories lie, cueing me into yes — a judgment for others, on racist comments made that were shrugged off as jest, and a judgment for me, for not having taken on the world on my shoulders to speak up for myself, or to have already corrected whatever fatal error that led me to have been told: you are no longer a good fit for an employee.

Resentment

Shows where you’re living in the past and not allowing the present to be

(content warning: abuse)

surprisingly, it was quick to accept and let go of resentment for a violent mother who thrashed about like a tantrum-ing toddler when not given her way.

once I was out, free, safe to breathe the cold crisp air I was relieved to be on my own, living on my terms, knowing that I had survived all this time to escape her wrath.

There is no resentment because I did not expect better of her, knowing that the smallest triggers set her siren ringing louder than ever her arms crashing through the air, knowing that deep down though I suffered, I could leave — she suffered, and will continue to suffer, as a result and consequence of not being able to change.

The one I resent is my father, because I expected so much better.

He was brightness to the situation, always telling me that it would be okay, in smiles that opened up hope. Yet it wasn’t until I left that I realized what poison those words had been, how insidious the words it’s going to be okay would be when followed up with as long as you behaved and stopped bothering me for I already have enough to worry about.

I clung to the surface of that iceberg, thinking that the outcome of being safe would come so long as I behaved precisely aligned with my mother’s every whim, quietly enduring each new pain so that my father would not have to worry about my safety.

How insidious those words can be to expect a child to fix a problem that adults could not control, to expect a child to cry silently, alone, so that an adult could pretend that nothing was wrong.

How insidiously this voice supposedly of honey and sweetness and positivity became venom that seeped through my veins building assumptions like you should fix this alone you should suffer but not complain you should take on problems larger than yourself and already have solved them to have value.

How insidiously this builds shame & guilt.

Shame & Guilt

Shame: shows you that you’re internalizing other’s beliefs about who you should be, or who you are, and that you need to reconnect with yourself.

Guilt: Shows you that you’re still living life in other people’s expectation of what you do

I do not know the difference yet, still building up my own values and meaning, affected by others’ expectations far beyond what I would like.

When you don’t have or haven’t yet built your own meaning others’ expectations become your own beliefs, and guilt blends into shame

as “I did something bad” (guilt) blends automatically into “I am something bad” (shame), until mistakes made weigh on you, internalized as an eternal truth.

it does not have to be this way as each bitter event happens, unravelling the tightly knit knot between shame and guilt, learning in slow recognition of what falls under which, building up a healthy boundary between my values and others expectations —

this is the freedom I yearn for, no — that I am working for.

Lucy (The Eggcademic) [she/her] once again wants to thank 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊. for her weekly prompts! This week’s words of focus were: Bitterness, Resentment, Discomfort, Guilt and Shame (in that order), though the words that came out focussed on Bitterness, Resentment, Shame and Guilt. I didn’t really see the patterns across multiple events but writing it all down together in one place, one batch of poetry has helped me link across these feelings and find commonalities in the things that do not rest in my mind, and reflect on precisely why they refuse to rest just yet.